Miranda Devine

Miranda Devine
–,
Friday,
September,
07,
2012,(4:03pm)

THIS is an excuse for child pornography addiction we haven’t heard before:

A psychologist treating former ABC presenter Andy Muirhead has told a court he viewed child pornography because of work stress and not for sexual gratification.
Dr Janet Haines has told the Tasmanian Supreme Court there were no indicators Muirhead could be considered a paedophile…
Dr Haines said Muirhead had developed a dissociation condition after working up to seven days a week in the two ABC jobs.
“He was exhausted, he didn’t have any balance in his life,” she told the court on Friday.
“That level of pressure increases people’s stress levels, it increases their arousal.
“That level of arousal starts to feel normal.”
She said the arousal was not sexual but involved the sympathetic nervous system causing symptoms such as increased adrenaline and heart rate.
A sense of detachment followed and heavy use of the internet for legitimate purposes then turned into browsing to find a “welcome diversion”.
Dr Haines said Muirhead had initially viewed adult pornography for sexual reasons but soon lost interest in it before “accidentally” coming across child-based material.
“You’re drawn to it because it is so alien to your value system,” she said.
She said the viewing of about 13,000 images over 16 months, at times on a daily basis, was irrelevant because Muirhead’s dissociative condition meant he lost track of those kinds of numbers.

Right. Is this where we're at? Where any behaviour, no matter how wrong, can be explained away and excused?

Every person who looks at child porn is creating demand for the product, which means more videos and images must be made, more children kidnapped or sold, more little victims abused, their degradation and screams preserved forever on the internet.

Miranda Devine
–,
Wednesday,
September,
05,
2012,(7:32am)

THE Prime Minister thought it was a good idea to make a self-serving stump speech to the people paying the nation’s growing bills, rather than accord miners the respect of addressing the issue of how her government’s industrial relations policies, new taxes and extra bureaucracy, are damaging their industry.

JULIA Gillard inflamed tensions with the resources industry when she used a speech to a major mining conference in Perth yesterday to promote her schools funding plan rather than address mounting concerns about rising taxes and high costs in a climate of plunging commodity prices.
Speaking after the nation’s third-biggest iron ore miner, Fortescue Metals Group, announced it would slash its $US10 billion ($9.7bn) expansion plan by more than one-third and cut hundreds of jobs in response to a severe price slump, the Prime Minister said the death of the mining boom had been “exaggerated” and China would fuel growth for decades.
But she spent most of her 20-minute address to the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies’ annual conference explaining her education policies and attempting to link the future of the mining industry to the schools reform plan she unveiled on Monday.
Ms Gillard told hundreds of industry leaders that while “miners invested in mines, teachers invested in minds” and the competition for skilled workers in the Asian Century would start in the nation’s high schools.

UPDATE:
MINING magnate Gina Rinehart tells a few home truths about the effect of government policies on the nation’s most valuable industry:

Ms Rinehart, in a video address posted on the Sydney Mining Club website, said Australia must become more competitive, blaming the mining and carbon taxes, red tape and high wages for the economy’s “sluggish” performance.

“[Our] competitiveness is falling, particularly in delivering major resource projects. Labour costs are typically 35 per cent higher here than on the United States Gulf Coast and they also can have lower labour costs still if they utilise illegal labour from Mexico and the South...”

“Business as usual will not do. Not when West African competitors can offer our biggest customers an average capital cost for a tonne of iron ore that’s $100 under the price offered by an emerging producer in the Pilbara. What was too-readily argued as the self-interested complaints of a greedy few is now becoming accepted as the truth, and more ominously is showing up in incontrovertible data,” she said.

But the only response to these legitimate concerns is sneering ridicule from Treasurer Wayne Swan and airy dismissal from Julia Gillard.

Miranda Devine
–,
Sunday,
September,
02,
2012,(9:19pm)

WITH the capture of a suspected accomplice of the Afghan National Army soldier who murdered three Australian soldiers last week, hope increases that the alleged killer, Lieutenant Hekmatullah, will be brought to justice.

The news comes as the US military suspends the training of Afghan soldiers for at least a month so that current recruits can be re-vetted, and stricter recruitment strategies be imposed in the wake of 34 so-called insider or “green-on-blue” attacks this year which have killed 45 international soldiers.

Australian and Afghan troops hunting the killer of Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, 40, of Penrith, Sapper James Martin, 21, of Perth, and Private Robert Poate, 23, of Canberra (pictured above, top row, left to right), have captured “a key facilitator”, according to a statement from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Two Australian special forces soldiers also died last week, in a helicopter crash in Helmund province: Lance Corporal Mervyn McDonald, 30, from Carnarvon in WA, and Private Nathanael Galagher, 23, from Wee Waa in NSW ((pictured above, bottom row, left to right).

The tragedy of five more Australian soldiers dead in Afghanistan reminds us yet again of the courage and nobility of our troops, who give up the comforts of home to risk their lives in hostile foreign lands to preserve our freedom and keep the world safe. Respect is owed to Generation Y which is shouldering much of the burden for our peace of mind.

Please also spare a thought this Father’s Day for the fatherless children of the men killed - and for all the dads in the armed forces serving our country far from home.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has condemned Australian troops for killing a 70-year-old imam and his son in a “unilateral” night raid in pursuit of the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three Diggers last week.

The imam’s son was a suspected Taliban insurgent.

The Australian Defence Force yesterday confirmed the raid on the village of Sola and the deaths of two insurgents, but claimed the operation had Afghan approval and was conducted in accordance with all rules of engagement.

Villager Sardar Mohammed, one of the 12 people rounded up in the raid, said yesterday the Australians arrived on Friday night in non-military vehicles as most villagers were praying at the mosque…

He denied the men were Taliban and said the slain 70-year-old, Raz Mohammed Akhund, was the village imam.
“They were not Taliban, they were poor people,” he said.

But another local man said that the imam’s son, Jalil Akhund, also killed in the raid, was known as a “big Talib"…

The Australian Defence Force yesterday confirmed the raid on the village of Sola and the deaths of two insurgents, but claimed the operation had Afghan approval and was conducted in accordance with all rules of engagement…

Just days after his government expressed its “deep sorrow” at the deaths of five Australian troops - three at the hands of Afghan National Army sergeant Hekmatullah - Mr Karzai issued a furious statement accusing Australian forces of breaching the agreement that grants Afghans oversight of NATO night raids by not informing his officials before the operation.

Seriously, if the relationship with our Afghan allies has deteriorated to such an extent, why are we still there?

We can’t expect our soldiers to be sitting ducks just to keep sweet with Karzai. Is he on our side or not? Where’s his angry denunciation of the Afghan Army killers of Australian soldiers? The

UPDATE:
At a press conference conference Monday morning Defence Minister Stephen Smith said Karzai is wrong and his statement is a regrettable “misunderstanding”.

“We told President Karzai we were disappointed with his release… It’s now up to the palace to respond.”

He also confirmed the weekend operation to find suspected Digger killer, Lieutenant Hekmatullah, and those suspected of harbouring him, was a “partnered” raid, authorised by local Afgan leaders.

“We are obliged to follow procedures laid down by ISAF and in this case those procedures were followed absolutely.”

Asked how he reconciled the fact that the people we train are killing us, he said: “I cannot envisage worse circumstances… There is no worse blow to morale than a so-called green on blue incident ... But again we have to understand there are 300-350,000 [Afghan soldiers and police] and less than 50 incidents in the last two years… [Such incidents] shouldn’t be allowed to reflect on our Afghan partners generally.

“The Afghan leadership have been as appalled as we are” by the green on blue killers.

Miranda Devine
–,
Sunday,
September,
02,
2012,(8:37am)

I loved Clint Eastwood’s characteristically cool performance at the Republican national convention in Florida last week.

Didn’t his support for Mitt Romney make the lefties crazy! Bam bam bam, he shot their sacred cows dead. All they had left was ageist slurs. They must think by branding him “bizarre” or “rambling” they can erase the damage he has done to their cause.

Get set for Clint’s movies to become even more popular as the Hollywood establishment snubs him (as if he cares).

I know, as you do, the sacrifice of Americans, especially the sacrifice of many of our bravest in the ultimate sacrifice, but our armed forces are the surest shield and foundation of liberty, and we are so fortunate that we have men and women in uniform who volunteer, they volunteer to defend us at the front lines of freedom, and we owe them our eternal gratitude.
...
“[The] essence of America, what really unites us, is not nationality or ethnicity or religion. It is an idea. And what an idea it is. That you can come from humble circumstances and you can do great things, that it does not matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.

[Ours] has never been a narrative of grievance and entitlement. We have never believed that I am doing poorly because you are doing well. We have never been jealous of one another and never envious of each others’ success.

And on a personal note: A little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham-- the most segregated big city in America. Her parents can’t take her to a movie theater or a restaurant but they can make her believe that even though she can’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, she can be President of the United States and she becomes the Secretary of State.
...
We must continue to welcome the world’s most ambitious people to be a part of us. In that way, we stay young and optimistic and determined. We need immigration laws that protect our borders, meet our economic needs, and yet show that we are a compassionate nation of immigrants.

It’s well worth a read.

Ann Romney, Presidential candidate Mitt’s wife, mother of their five adult sons and survivor of breast cancer and MS, was a startlingly good performer. Loving and determined, she humanised her somewhat wooden technocrat husband, who appears to be a good family man - the greatest judge of character there is.

I know this good and decent man for what he is. He’s warm, and loving, and patient. He has tried to live his life with a set of values centered on family, faith, and love of one fellow man. From the time we were first married, I have seen him spend countless hours helping others . I’ve seen him drop everything to help a friend in trouble, and been there when late-night calls of panic come from a member of our church whose child has
been taken to the hospital.

It was all optimistic and uplifting. Which brings me to the criticism made by David Brooks of the New York Times. He is a conservative or centre right columnist in a left wing paper. It gives his columns a nuanced quality, especially when he writes about Republicans.

His latest, A Party of Strivers, praises the Republican party for “unabashedly [celebrating] the striver, who started small, struggled hard, looked within and became wealthy. Speaker after speaker argued that this ideal of success is under assault by Democrats who look down on strivers, who undermine self-reliance with government dependency, who smother ambition under regulations.

Republicans promised to get government out of the way. Reduce the burden of debt. Offer Americans an open field and a fair chance to let their ambition run.

If you believe, as I do, that American institutions are hitting a creaky middle age, then you have a lot of time for this argument. If you believe that there has been a hardening of the national arteries caused by a labyrinthine tax code, an unsustainable Medicare program and a suicidal addiction to deficits, then you appreciate this streamlining agenda, even if you don’t buy into the whole Ayn Rand-influenced gospel of wealth.

On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted Democratic Party, which says: We don’t have an agenda, but we really don’t like theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.

But Brooks sees a flaw: the party’s “rampant hyperindividualism”.

Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.

But there’s a problem. I see the G.O.P.... is offering skilled people the freedom to run their race. I don’t see what the party is offering the waitress with two kids, or the warehouse worker whose wages have stagnated for a decade, or the factory worker whose skills are now obsolete.

The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the current G.O.P. is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.

Government does not always undermine initiative. Some government programs, like the G.I. Bill, inflame ambition. Others depress it. What matters is not whether a program is public or private but its effect on character. Today’s Republicans, who see every government program as a step on the road to serfdom, are often blind to that. They celebrate the race to success but don’t know how to give everyone access to that race.

Brooks’ philosophy sounds like compassionate conservatism, itsThird Way - and like the best Australian conservatism.

But he misjudges Romney if he claims he lacks compassion or commitment to bettering the circumstances of those less fortunate, judging by his background of service and philanthropy. In any case, a healthy economy serves everyone.

A forensic examination of publicly available power-supply data shows Victoria’s carbon-intensive brown-coal power stations do not reduce the amount of coal they burn when wind power is available to the grid.

Cumming says surplus energy is wasted to make room for intermittent supplies from wind.

Cumming’s findings have been confirmed by Victoria’s coal-fired electricity producers and by

independent energy analysts who say it is more efficient to keep a brown-coal power-station running than turn it down and then back up.

Without gas or some other form of peaking power supply the Victorian electricity system is not equipped for the vagaries of wind power.

Even in SA, which uses gas, not coal, for base-load power and makes much greater use of wind, Cumming estimates the cost of greenhouse gas abatement at $1484 a tonne.

Cumming used data published by the Australian Energy Market Operator, which tracks power sector generation every five minutes.

The results showed fossil fuel generators, in the same periods when wind turbines had been operating, fluctuated their output to match demand but did not reduce their rate of coal consumption.

In an email to Cumming, electricity generator IPR-GDF SUEZ Australia confirmed his findings.

“Given that the power stations mentioned are all ‘baseload’, their generation output is relatively constant 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, other than due to minor fluctuations depending on market demand and/or shutdown of generation units for maintenance or repairs,” a company spokesman said.

Cumming says his investigation demonstrates how green energy theories do not always match the facts.